Bernini, Borromini, il cantiere di San Pietro e l’altare Filomarino di Napoli: una fonte ignorata e un riesame della questione della rottura tra i due artisti

The article stems from the examination of a letter belonging to the correspondence, today preserved at the Archives diplomatiques du Ministère des Affaires étrangères in Paris-La Courneuve, between Cardinal Jules Mazarin and Elpidio Benedetti, his agent in Rome. In the letter, dated August 1660, Benedetti refers to the Filomarino altar in the Church of the Holy Apostles of Naples, indicating Gian Lorenzo Bernini as its author instead of Francesco Borromini. This significant document is not unpublished; however, it appeared in a mere footnote in a volume of historical studies on Mazarin, published in 1981. It therefore went almost unnoticed, and art and architecture historians have never taken it into consideration. In this article, Aloisio Antinori discusses the credibility and the various implications of the surprising attribution of Benedetti, who certainly witnessed the process during which the altar was designed in Rome to be then constructed in Naples, and perhaps took part in it directly as a collaborator of Ascanio Filomarino. The interpretation of the document also offers the author the opportunity to re-examine, through a study of all the available sources, the question of the end of the professional collaboration between Bernini and Borromini, an event that has never been entirely clarified.